Six research projects from The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University have been afforded access to the Windscale Laboratories located at Sellafield, supported by funding from the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) and The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s (NDA) Academic User Access Call 2022.
The Academic User Access Call aims to facilitate access to a range of equipment and materials in NNL facilities, with a focus on research and development in accordance with the NDA’s mission to clean up the UK’s civil nuclear legacy and to produce research to inform the design of protocols guiding the future of nuclear waste disposal.
Enacting the NDA’s mission requires high-level academic research to produce a national capability with the skills required to be future technical leaders in the decommissioning field. The Academic User Access Call supports this target by granting academic users who might work with low activity materials in university laboratories access to active materials that can only be handled on nuclear licensed sites. This ensures that the decommissioning initiatives taking place are informed by a high quality of academic research and that in turn, research; development and innovation are optimised by access to national facilities – ultimately enabling decommissioning to be achieved more quickly, safely and cheaply.
In conjunction with funding from the Engineering, Physical Sciences and Research Council (EPSRC), Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and Sellafield Ltd. (SL), one grant from the call afforded researchers from the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University access to NNL’s Windscale facility based at Sellafield. Facilities such as Windscale allow for the analysis of materials that can only be handled on nuclear licensed sites. As these cannot be used in university laboratories, the opportunity to access these highly active materials in the context of facilities dedicated to the processing and management of radioactive waste, researchers were able to gain insight into the work taking place in decommissioning facilities and gain experience and expertise to inform their own research.
During their visit the researchers witnessed cans containing historic samples being opened in concrete shielded cells and were able to examine these at the site. This access provided a rare opportunity for contact with a collection of actinide and fission product containing ceramic (Synroc) and glass samples that have accumulated over 30 years of radiation damage. These unique samples may be of critical importance to making a post-closure safety case for the geological disposal of radioactive materials. Research utilising these materials could therefore be invaluable in contributing to the NDA’s mission of total clean-up.
The visit also facilitated a discussion with NNL’s Subject Matter Experts, which provided important input in designing and developing a forward research plan for their projects, ensuring an adherence to the decommissioning goals laid out in the NDA’s mission statement.
Professor Claire Corkhill, Chair in Nuclear Material Degradation and EPSRC Early Career Research Fellow and Reader at the University of Sheffield Said:
“The visit to NNL’s Windscale facility opened my eyes to the challenges of performing research on highly active materials. It was fascinating to see, for the first time in my career, some actual real high level radioactive waste in the hot cells, rather than the low activity simulants that we use in university laboratories. I’m especially excited about the unique opportunity to work with NNL to examine these radioactive waste materials, made almost 40 years ago, allowing us to gain valuable insight into radioactive waste degradation in storage and disposal environments.”
The NNL academic user access call was sponsored by the NDA, with additional funding provided by NNL, NNUF and Royce. This user access call provided academics with an opportunity to apply to use equipment situated primarily in active laboratories on the Sellafield and Westinghouse sites and was designed to enhance and streamline user access to relevant equipment and facilities at NNL.
